With that said, the last couple of days have felt like a whirlwind.
After some delays on monday we got into Knoxville around 8 and were determined to find PF Changes for dinner. The five of us went out to dinner there over the short spring break while we were training for nats thanks to the good recommendation of Jenna and myself and it became our favorite restaurant.
Our car has a story of its own. Long story short, we like to call it the party van. Kait Riesmeyer can fill you in on why... just bug her about it.
After we ate there we had just enough time to go check into the hotel and fall asleep.
TUESDAY(Jennas B-day)
We went to swim in the morning and the pool is nice. It didn't quite feel like Minnesota but maybe thats just because we had great experiences there last year and we were craving to repeat them. Once we swam though, we realized it really is a great pool, lots of fast swimming has and will occur!
The banquet was good. We sat with the guys from Staten Island and struggled to understand their Russian Accents throughout dinner but they were nice, and shared laughs with us when the speaker was a commedian spoke about the being on the struggle bus.
watch this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyWVdAN7sME) and you will see what we saw... and we all know that sometimes we ride the struggle bus... especially this thursday. we were driving it. but thats for later in this catch up blog post.
WEdnesday
Highlight of this day was the 200 medley relay. We were seated way down and weren't supposed to score. We had an awesome prelims swim and made it back 12th! At night we went a little slower at night but still managed to place 14th thanks to a DQ from CMU. We were really excited about this outcome because we assumed it would be a lot harder to return at night and score points because of the new selection process, yet we still scored 2 places higher than last year!
Kait and Jenny also had great 200IM swims to lead us off!
THURSDAY
we have only had the morning session today so far, obviously, but it has been quite a day already. I don't think i can really write about the true stress and anxiety we went through this morning. As many of you know, after we swam the 200 free relay, we were declared as a DQ becasue of jumping. THe catch was, we all knew we had the slowest start ever. As you all know, Coach was not ammused. He was over at the conference area most of the rest of the session fighting this. We knew things were looking up when there was a heat in the womens Medley relay where 5 relays were dq'ed. Basically the pad system wasn't working that well and it was dqing relays, especially when people do jump starts because it didn't register their steps.
THANK GOODNESS is all i have to say. So we are seated ninth, Coach put up a really good fight for us and i am really thankful to have a coach who spent so much time to do the right thing or else they might have just brushed it off.
AND KAIT MADE FINALS IN THE 100 FLY!!!!! that was defiantly a highlight of the morning. Mad us all feel better about how today was going to go and, there isn't much else to say except that she swam out of her mind, it was unbelievable. I hope you all watched it, and if you didn't, you better tonight.
Stay tuned for more and hopefully we can include some funnier stories rather than stressful ones.
